As posted elsewhere i took my Twenty to Portugal on a mini, mini tour. Some observations
and questions:
1. Bolts and nuts matter!! I was riding along in 'sortoff the middle of nowhere' quite far from Faro or any place really urban when i heard a scary rattling type noise. At first i wanted to continue because i thought it was just the chain hitting the chaingaurd. But i thought the better of it. Turned out that i had lost the bolt and nut which attached my Blackburn Mountainrack to the frame, it had vibrated loose and the evil sound i heard was the Alu tube hitting my spokes! (the Blackburn has some tension on it when mounted on the Twenty it is a little narrow) I shudder to think what would have happened if i had gone over a bump and the tube had actually gotten into my spokes.
I did come prepared for my trip with all the basic tools, tie rips some bolts and nuts and rings. But as fortune would have it this was the one size i had run out of. So i made a temporary fix with two tie rips. Luckily? we soon passed by one of the very few if not only bike stores in that area. This was a pretty big store that sold some A brand bikes as well as stocked quite some components up to and including Dura Ace. But when i asked for an M5 bolt and nut they said they had none! A grease monkey in training (I don't mean that in a bad way, he was nice but a bit useless) actually did his best to find one from me and asked the head mechanic and that mechanic finally said (in a moody sort of way) the only one they had was a Titanium variant that would set me back E 3,58,.. and oh yeh they only had the bolt, no nuts whatsoever,..WTF? What a liar and what horrid service. I refuse to believe that in the whole store they didn't have single nut in a common bike size. If he had really wanted to help out he could even have taken a nut of one of the hundreds of bikes there and replaced it soon thereafter.
Anyway i rode on with the Tie Rips for another 20 Kilometers and they held. Then luckily in Faro i found an excellent hardware store that sold Hex head Stainless Steel Bolts and nuts WITH nylock rings cheap! I bought quite a few and have since replaced many of of my bolts with these variants. No more vibrating loose for me!
2. How about the 'Jezus Nut' (that is apparantly what helicopter mechanics call the most essential nut on a helicopter, the one that keeps the Rotors in place) on a Twenty. I mean the nut that afixes the two halves of the Twenty and allows it to pivot... Is this a odd/english thread? Have any of you guys added a ring underneath it or replaced it with a SS/Nylock variant? I added a ring because it seemed to me the pressure would be spread out more evenly that way.
3. What about the chaingaurd... Does that also have nuts and bolts with unusual threading..? I have replaced the back ones with the aforementioned variants but the front one i am not sure what to do about, the square style nut is welded to the frame and seems to have different threading than the bolt i want to use. Anyone just tried forcing a standard threading bolt in here or drilled it out or..? I am not too fond of the original bolt because i am worried about the slot style screwhead which is easy to
wear out and will then be stuck.
For the rest, the area around Faro is really fun to tour and stealth camp. There are lots of old ruines
where you can easily camp, people are very friendly, food is cheap and good. Just make sure to have some pretty high gears for the short but steep hills. The roads are also good with a wide shoulder good for cycling on but i would really advice against night cycling. Cyclist are a rarity in the area (and Portugal) but people seem to think it is cool, especially if you are a 'weird' small bike.